Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
He glanced over his shoulder, watching as Miss Stanwycke stood and surrendered the piano to Adele, who began a lengthy and technically difficult piano piece, perhaps at his Aunt Katrina’s request, for that lady looked on with interest. The lovely tutor joined the group near the fire and stretched out her white hands, rubbing them as if to warm them. But he knew she wasn’t cold; her fingers were warm, soft, and supple, like the best Kashmir cloth.
Count Delacroix said something to her and she sat down by him and joined the lively conversation with Charlotte and Melisande. Nikolas’s uncle Bartol brought the ladies cups of tea and stayed, standing nearby, occasionally interjecting a comment. But as he watched, Nikolas became aware of the tension in Elizabeth Stanwycke’s spine, how rigidly she held herself; she swiftly glanced at him, then away again, and then back, his gaze holding her like a trap.
His stomach roiled with comprehension; she was not indifferent to him. Far from it. She was fleeing the attraction she felt toward him, and the awareness she felt perhaps even now, as she lost the thread of conversation and was brought back to it by Bartol, her cheeks pinkening to a delightful hue of rose.
The tattoo of his heartbeat thrummed through him, pounding an insistent, pulsating rhythm of remembered moments, her gaze turned up to his, her warmth close to him, her lips so close he could almost taste them. How many times had he wondered if her lips were as soft as they looked, or if she could possibly be as delicious? Countless times, even though they had been in each other’s company on only a dozen or so occasions in the last two weeks, and out of those times, only a few had been alone.
Circling the room, watching her and not caring who saw it, he felt her consciousness like a blood call, a tingle of anticipation heating him to fevered state. Sometimes she glanced his way, then swiftly averted her eyes, the rapid rise and fall of her bosom betraying her as her stained cheeks and trembling limbs signaled him.
How could he draw her away from the others? How could he get her alone?
But then sanity reasserted its dominion over his brain, if not his body. Swallowing hard, he turned away. He had no right to be thinking the things he was thinking or imagining the two of them in intimate contact, flesh against flesh, desire melting them together. The fact that she was resisting their mutual attraction should shield her from his depredation; she was in his control, and thus safe from him in every way. Only a brute would take advantage of a woman in his employ or control, and that he thought she might feel something for him did not exempt him from honorable behavior. In fact, it behooved him to act with more scrupulous attention to the proprieties. Asserting the rigid control he considered his saving grace, he strolled to a cooler part of the room, regained his composure, and turned back to his domain, swiftly assessing the company.
Christoph had disappeared. He had mishandled the boy again; his words had been barbed, certainly, but it was frustrating to see a von Wolfram male as pallid and ineffectual as a sybaritic court musician. The lad was oversensitive! Adele was still playing, her music technically brilliant but without the soft accents of Miss Stanwycke’s. Gerta, who looked weary now, was whispering to their Aunt Katrina, who nodded and shooed her away toward the door. His sister was exhausted, no doubt, after a week or two of illness, and was on her way up to her rooms. He joined his aunt on the settee and she confirmed his guess, that Gerta was on her way up to her suite, fatigued by the socializing.
“And so, Nikolas,” she said, watching his face. “I am still trying to understand this man you have become. Uta tells me much, you know, but… are you happy, Nikolas? Tell me truly.”
“Are men of our race ever happy? I think it is not in our blood, Aunt. An Englishman might be happy, though he will never admit it. A Frenchman almost certainly will, and will speak of it at length, while an Italian will paint to express his great happiness and his sorrow both. And a Spaniard… even desolation will give him some measure of joy. But a German… he will always feel sorrow most keenly.”
“Perhaps you are right. I often felt, while in England, that those around me experienced a powerful, self-satisfied joy, though they would never admit it, preferring to express soberly and with great pretended humility that they were fortunate by God’s grace only.”
He chuckled, but then sobered. “Aunt, how did you meet Miss Stanwycke? You never told me.”
“She was teaching a couple of silly girls approaching womanhood in the house of relations of hers; she was kin to the master of the house, while my relation was to the mistress. But I fear my cousin—as I said, the mistress of the house— did not like me very well, and that I bored her. She often sent for Elizabeth, and when she joined the company she was good enough to sit and talk with me. I found her… interesting. When your letter arrived asking about a tutor for Charlotte, I immediately thought of her.”
“And yet you did not answer for a month. Why did you hesitate?” He watched her face and could see in the chilly blue eyes a mist of evasion.
“I visited the house often to observe her, to see if she was truly suited for your task. And I was not sure if she would come, you know. It was quite a leap, leaving her homeland.”
“And yet she did, leaving behind those you say were her kinsmen. Why did she do so?”
His aunt’s wrinkled face hardened into angry lines and creases. “She was undervalued and ill-paid. I felt sure she would receive better treatment from those who would not take her for granted and who might recognize the brilliance of her mind and the inestimable worth of her heart.”
“Ah, now you see, you have told me why she
should
have left, but you said nothing about why she did finally decide to leave.”
“Who can say? I am not inside her heart or mind, Nikolas. I spoke to her at length and talked her into it. Enough. Why did you just a while ago get up so abruptly after cornering her on that piano stool? Did you make her an offer and did she reject you?”
Shocked she should so swiftly come to such a conclusion, Nikolas understood how blatant he had been in his quick and impulsive pursuit of her, and how unfortunate that was for them both. He must not expose her to family gossip. “Of course not. Do not repeat such a thing, Aunt.”
“I would never say such a thing to anyone but you. How harsh you have become, and how hard,” she said, her old eyes filled with sadness and knowledge. “I would not know you now as the pretty, scholarly boy you were.”
“My life was destined for other things,” he said.
“But you have left behind so much of what made you different from Johannes and the others.
What have you become, Nikolas?”
Irritated, he said, “Nothing so very bad, I hope, Aunt.” He rose and bowed politely to her. “I must go now. I will visit you and Uta on the morrow, for if I do not, she will complain I am ignoring her.”
Elizabeth glanced up and saw the count stride from the room. She excused herself from the others and went to join her friend, who sat still listening to Countess Adele, advancing now to another even more difficult piece.
“How nice to see you enjoying the company of your family,” Elizabeth said, sitting beside her, feeling the comfort of familiarity. With this woman, though Frau Liebner was occasionally autocratic and brittle, she knew she had a friend.
“Yes.”
She had answered absently, and Elizabeth examined her, the crinkled forehead, the worried eyes. “What’s wrong, Frau Liebner? Has something upset you?”
“No. No, it is nothing. Or if it is, it is nothing you can help, my dear.” The old woman gazed at her fondly. “I hope I have not brought you from one bad situation to another, Elizabeth. I pray it is not so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things have changed in the last ten years. Nikolas has changed. He is a harder man now.”
“Is he? And yet he is devoted to the family and does everything for their benefit. Was that not always so?”
“Yes. When he came back after the tragedies—”
“After the deaths?” Elizabeth asked, pointedly.
“Yes, after Anna and Hans and Johannes died.” She glanced over at Elizabeth but did not explain further. “When Nikolas came back, he was still the eager, warm lad he had been when he left on his tour of Italy and Greece. Even in the midst of great tragedy, he kept his… oh, how do you say it in English? His humanity, his compassion. And even when I went away ten years ago, he was… softer. Now he is like flint, hard and sharp.”
There was silence between them, but then Frau Liebner took her hand and clasped it hard.
“Elizabeth, if there is anything between you… stop!” she said, putting up one hand when Elizabeth would have interjected a negative. “Do not reply. I am not accusing nor asking. I am merely saying if there is ever anything between you, do not let him hurt you.”
“What do you mean?” The warning gave her a pang of anxiety.
But the old woman just shook her head. “I do not know. I just do not know. Uta says he is not so very changed underneath, but I’m not so sure. I don’t know him anymore.”
Elizabeth followed the woman’s gaze, but it was only directed to the door out of which Count Nikolas had strode minutes before.
THOUGH Nikolas read for a long while and then retired, he was sleepless. The scene in the drawing room had left him agitated and wakeful. Homer had always put him to sleep, even when he was studying at the Heidelberg University, so perhaps the
Iliad
would do the task once more. He rose, threw on a robe, and made his way to the library, padding silently down the hall, across the gallery, and up to the half-open door but halting abruptly as he saw a glimmering light within.
Who could it be?
Who else
, he thought with a swift pulse of satisfaction. He slipped in through the doorway and there Elizabeth was, gazing down and running one finger over the family bible, her elegant brows furrowed as she mouthed words she was trying to make out in the elaborate German text. Swiftly, silently, like a gray wolf in the forest, he moved across the space and said, “May I help you translate, Miss Stanwycke?”
Her gasp echoed and she jumped back from the book on the lectern as if she were scalded by it. He was beside her in a second, the spill of light over her pale skin showing a fluttering nerve by her eye as she stared at him in consternation.
“I… I was just trying… to… to learn your language.”
“By looking at my family’s history? What word on this page had you so puzzled?”
She was forced to step back toward the book, and he felt her shivering.
Was she forever doomed to be caught by him in acts of secret elucidation? Elizabeth wondered, trying to focus on the bible in front of her and find the word that had puzzled her so.
Sleepless and cold, she had slipped from her room and wandered, but the draw of the forbidden was irresistible and she had entered his domain. Their interaction at the piano that evening and Frau Liebner’s troubling warning had only made him more of a tantalizing mystery, for there had to be some force within him that made her so aware of him, even as she was determined to resist that allurement.
Having found the mysterious phrase, Elizabeth glanced back up at Nikolas. A blue vein pulsed in his neck, standing out like a whipcord, and Elizabeth’s gaze was riveted there, as Nikolas stood above her.
“Would you like me to translate, Miss Stanwycke?” he repeated, his voice deceptively soft.
“I… I would. I’m attempting to learn the language better, Count,” she repeated, feeling foolish and trying to master her agitation. “And family bibles… well, I can guess many of the words from context, you see.” They were so close that she could see where the bristles of his beard shadowed his skin, the dark outline arcing up to his hairline and down under his square chin. His open robe—black-figured satin with silk cord binding it—exposed a naked V, and the dark chest hairs curled flat against his pale skin almost up to where his pulse thrummed at the base of his throat.
Nikolas moved closer and stood behind her, his breath warm on her neck. “Ah, so that is the word,” he said, placing his finger next to hers on the page. “That means ‘stillborn,’” he said.
“We had another brother—he would have been my junior by three years—but it was not fated to be, and my mother lost him.”
The pool of golden light highlighted the dark hairs on the back of his broad hand and the gold and onyx ring he wore, with the family crest emblazoned. Hypnotized, Elizabeth brushed her finger over it and heard his swift intake of breath as their hands touched. She swallowed and tried to catch her breath, but it was impossible, suffocated as she as by warring emotions. She closed the bible and moved away from him in the confines of the narrow space between the lectern and the wall of books.
“My aunt,” he said, following her, “has told me little of your family, Miss Stanwycke, but that you lived with them and worked for them. Why do you not live with them still?”
“I am an orphan, but I believe you already know that.”
“Yes, but you do have family, and were in fact living with them when Aunt Katrina met you,”
he repeated.
“Yes.”
“Why did you leave them? Surely even the role of poor relation is preferable to being an even poorer tutor in a foreign land?”
He was being deliberately cruel, she thought at first, by calling her the poor relation, but when she looked at his expression there was no taunt there, merely curiosity.
She sat down abruptly on a chair. “I… I couldn’t live there any longer. There were…
problems.”
“Problems?”
“Problems,” she said firmly, unwilling to elaborate. She was not going to recount for his elucidation her humiliation and shame and the awful banishment that would have sent her to the streets of London.
Curiosity warred with courtesy on his handsome face. She couldn’t stand to see it anymore and rose, swiftly going to the other end of the room and gazing at his big desk. “The first night,” she said out loud, “you just appeared in this room, as if you were an apparition. I have figured out that there must a be a secret passage to this room for some reason,” She turned to face him. “Why? And is that why I’m not supposed to be in here alone?”